MINOT – Superintendent Dennis Duquette said at a public hearing Tuesday night that he estimated an initial half-million dollars in savings under the proposed consolidation of Mechanic Falls, Minot and Poland schools.

Duquette said he foresaw savings in transportation, food service and building maintenance, plus reductions in administrative and teaching staffs.

He addressed Minot residents attending the hearing to learn about the School Union 29 merger plan.

“I knew the citizens of Minot would show up and Minot didn’t disappoint,” said Colleen Quint, who chaired the committee that produced the plan.

The hearing held in Mechanic Falls a week ago drew three people and produced only a couple of questions; the hearing in Poland drew not a single member of the public.

The plan revises the relationship of the three towns, now in a union, to agree with the terms of the state’s revised school consolidation law.

Each of the towns will elect five representatives to serve on a single board. Currently, each town has its own school committee.

Quint said the changes would produce efficiencies that would reduce costs at the top, which is the administrative portion of the budget, and at the bottom, which are the three support services of food, transportation and building maintenance.

“By saving at the top and the bottom, we’ll have more for the middle, actual education,” Quint said.

While it appears that the consolidation offers opportunity for saving money, there were some who saw losses.

Resident George Buker bemoaned the fact that with the consolidation, a school budget would no longer be debated at town meeting.

“We’ll have to take what they offer, yes or no. We won’t be able to debate the school budget article by article,” he said.

Carl Beckett, a member of the consolidation study committee, noted that because of changes in how budgets are presented, townspeople had already lost the ability to vote on the school budget in such detail.

Quint said that in the future school budgets would be decided through a referendum at the polls rather than at an open town meeting.

It was a change, she said, necessitated by state law. She said she agreed with the statement made earlier by Steve Holbrook of the town school committee and the consolidation committee: “‘This solution makes the best of the situation.'”

Those interested in more information may contact the town office. The plan will also be the subject of a call-in show on public access TV Channel 11 at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29.